


the shape of a soul

by persephonea



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Character Death, Child Death, Demon Connor, Demon Deals, Drama & Romance, Eventual Happy Ending, Falling In Love, M/M, Tender Sex, Villains, becoming human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 14:45:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20448839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephonea/pseuds/persephonea
Summary: “Didn’t they warn you about the price you’ll have to pay, little lion?”Hank peers at the unsteady shadow, unable to read their face, hiding behind a veil. Looking down at Cole again, he feels his heart beat strongly enough for them both.“Anything you want, it’s yours,” Hank says, firmly decided.“You.” The creature reaches a hand for him, an open palm facing upwards. “Your soul for the boy.”--Hank trades his soul to watch his son grow up. In the end, what he gets out of the deal is nothing he could've expected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello lovely humans, our Hankcon Reverse Big Bang is ripe for the picking! Working on this fic over the past few months has been wonderful, and it's been a challenge as well, creating a world for the characters, then falling completely in love with it. A big thanks to my friends who have supported me through the process, love you ❤
> 
> Please, check out [Marou](https://twitter.com/Marourin), a crazy talented artist, whose art was the base of the story.
> 
> Also, a shoutout to my beta, beautiful @HoneyButterYum !

The last rays of sunshine dance in the air as the world turns on its axis in the wrong direction.

When Hank comes to, for the first few seconds, he doesn’t register anything but the loud ringing in his ears, an insistent, exigent sound like an eighteen-wheeler pressing down the horn with a ferocity stoking the road rage. Clutching at his head to make it stop, his fingers touch something wet and hot. He opens his eyes to the dark spots swimming in his vision and tries to blink them away while the hammer falling on his head keeps thumping with all its might. 

A car horn. His sight clears and his hands are painted bright red. The crash. 

“Cole!”

Hank moves, attempting to turn in his seat and wincing at the sharp pain flooding the whole of his ribcage. He can’t see in the back. He pushes away the airbag the was holding him squashed in place. The passenger’s side is folded on itself, the metal wrinkled like cheap fabric. The other vehicle fits against them like a glove, warped and snug, the hood pressed and its driver hanging through the smashed windscreen, unmoving.

“Cole, fuck!”

Feeling the handle, he puts all his weight on the door, pushes against it with his shoulder, until the jammed mechanism lets up and his upper body falls out like a marionette with clipped strings.

Lifting himself up on his elbows, he wriggles his legs and drags the rest of his body, grunting and grinding his teeth, cold sweat coming out on his temples and along the line of his spine. The smell of burnt gravel and hot metal stings in his nostrils and he almost can’t carry the weight of his limbs, muscles weakened and locked with rising panic.

“Baby, baby.”

He rips the backseat door open and catches Cole’s small body as it slides off the door, unconscious, right into his arms. The window is a fractured spiderweb with red seeping into its delicate lines.

With his eyes closed, Cole looks like he’s sleeping, peaceful in his stillness if not for the gash on his temple; the swelling has twisted his face into contorted proportions. Hank doesn’t want to look. He has to.

He lowers Cole onto the ground gently, laying him down on his back. Hank knows what he has to do, he knows and yet the simple act of feeling his son’s pulse seems like the hardest thing he’s ever done. 

“Come on, honey, you can do it.”

The heartbeat is faint and irregular, but it’s still there. Cole’s chest is barely rising, with the phantoms of shallow breaths. Before the relief can flood Hank’s body, it is a chilling sharp claw which buries itself into his heart instead. He almost missed it, the rain he hasn’t realized was falling covered the tracks. He wipes the clear fluid leaking from Cole’s nose and has to bite down on the heel of his palm to stop himself from being overcome with uncontrollable shakes. The skin around his eyes is bruised, quickly turning dark and hollow. 

He fumbles for his phone and a hysterical giggle almost bubbles from his throat when he finds it bizarrely still intact in his pocket. His thumb keeps slipping over the screen, blood mixed with water, and it takes him a few tries to dial the number.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

His tongue is like lead in his mouth and painfully wraps around the words, “my son’s hurt.” The truck crashed into them coming from the sharp turn, skidding on the thin rime of early November morning over the empty road, without any means of stopping. Huron River Drive, just past Dexter, coming down from the weekend at Pinckney.

“We’ll be there in 15 minutes, sir.”

Cole might not have that long.

Hank drops the phone and cradles his son’s face. Touching the corners of the darkened skin, his chest clenches at the innocent contrast of Cole’s pale eyelashes resting against it. Wincing, he gingerly pulls back Cole’s eyelids only to find his pupils dilated and still, the white of his eyes bloodshot. Hank puts a heavy palm over them, covering the unseeing dead stare. Hank’s shoulders shake with adrenaline, with dread.

He stays there like that, hunched over Cole’s body, trying to shield him from the pouring rain, the dirt seeping through his soaked pants, knees slipping in the mud quickly forming in the ditch by the side of the road.

The rusty smell of blood interlacing with the ozone odor and the smell of dug-up wet earth hides him behind its curtain, dulls the sharp edges that keep poking at the base of his spine. For a moment, he’s back at his grandma’s house in the warm month of July, where nothing bad ever happens.

He’s hiding a clump of soil underneath his pillow, his head pressed into the crisp white linen— the sheets will need changing in the morning when his mom will come to make his bed and uncover the stain.

“So your dreams come true, little lion,” his grandma says as her hand, dirt under the fingernails, draws back.

As her voice grows creakier, her wrinkles deeper and the shadows in the room longer, he’s clutching at his covers, wide-eyed and with bated breath. He sees twisted faces of demons crawling on the floor and creeping from behind the wardrobe.

“They will come at your beck and call, if only you return a piece of yourself to the ground from which you’ve been lifted.” 

Grandma’s eyes are the only two glistening spots in the dark, a beacon of enticing light as Hank burrows himself more into the protective comfort of his blanket.

“A wish granted by blood never comes without a price. Never make a deal with a hot head and a grieving heart.”

He’s never showed Cole the trick with the nighttime wish. Hank’s hand moves, guided by the vivid image of the memory. 

Perhaps he should pray, perhaps he should turn to the Sunday school sculpture of Jesus with tear tracks on his gaunt face pinched in pain. But the sky is already crying and he finds himself remembering the old ones rising from the lush green and wide bogs of his grandma’s homeland.

His fingers burrow under the malleable soil, the blood coating his hands coming off and staying half a foot underground. Taking a deep breath, he tears his eyes from Cole and looks to the treeline, the bold dash drawing his desperate gaze with a sense of irrevocability.

A dark shadow passes between the trees. Hank blinks to clear his vision. The silhouette doesn’t appear again but it stays burned into his retinas like a sun dot or a ghost drop seen out of the corner of one’s eye.

The world shifts once again. The plate pulls away and Hank’s stuck in the rift of his own creation. He thinks he’s moved, taken Cole’s body into his arms, set off on the path leading into the woods. Yet he still feels his knees sinking deeper into the ground and his hand clutching the clod, buried deep, Cole lying under him.

His consciousness slides behind a fragile glass barrier, one side a dream and the other side a nightmare. He’s being pulled into different directions and the thread between the two is being stretched thinner, taut like a bowstring before it snaps.

He’s not sure if he ever reaches the trees until he’s kneeling on the sweet-smelling pine needles and dead oak, a mirror image of the hunched form in the roadside ditch. Cole’s so cold in his embrace. The crowns above them rustle their leaves, shake their limbs as if to welcome him to their home. The spinning axis stops in place and stills, just as everything around them. The rain does not perforate through the dark green canopy.

“You called for me.”

The voice guides his gaze to a figure sitting on the rotten stump in the middle of the clearing where he finds himself in.

“Your blood was a kind offering, thank you for letting me have you.”

The tone of the voice is comforting; it beckons and lulls Hank though the base of his spine prickles, the gooseflesh rises over the surface of his body and his muscles beg to bend and bow to the strong pull of the uncanny shape in front of him.

He finds it difficult to push the words out, the powerful presence compressing his chest, holding down the breath stuck inside.

“Are you a demon?” He asks the question coming forth in his mind, his grandmother’s stories a whisper intertwining with his thoughts.

If not for the scent of hot, melting metal in his nostrils on the other side, he would be certain he hadn’t survived the crash. He’s merely an observer, caught in an intermission between the acts of a play of someone else’s direction.

“I’m whatever you want me to be, little lion.”

A sob forces its way out of Hank’s throat, the endearment caressing his hurt like a warm, wrinkled hand he remembers lovingly combing fingers through the head of his golden curls.

It is the promise hidden in the memory of his grandma’s touch, an affirmation that he’s back in the place where nothing bad ever happens, that prompts him to ask: “Can you help my son?”

He tries to meet their gaze, but it’s like he’s seeing them through a shimmery curtain, they are frayed around the edges and the traits keep slipping from his grasp.

“Your son’s already dead.”

Hank hugs Cole more firmly to him. He recognizes this for a truth, somewhere along the line the small chest stopped rising.

“Can you help him?” Hank insists. _ Please, please, help him. _ He hangs onto the plea just like onto his son’s unmoving body.

“Didn’t they warn you about the price you’ll have to pay, little lion?”

Hank peers at the unsteady shadow, unable to read their face, hiding behind a veil. Looking down at Cole again, he feels his heart beat strongly enough for them both.

“Anything you want, it’s yours,” Hank says, firmly decided. 

“You.” The creature reaches a hand for him, an open palm facing upwards. “Your soul for the boy.”

He’s watching himself from above, bent before the entity, a tangle of his sunkissed curls losing its form and turning grey, the bags under his eyes more sunken, wrinkles in the corners more prominent, his body softer, muscles weaker, skin adorned with age spots— life being drained out of him with the bond of his soul.

“Then you’ll have me.”

The veil finally lifts up, just enough for Hank to catch the corner of a disarming smile, a flash of white teeth, of deep brown gaze and they’re gone.

“I’ll be seeing you soon.” The wind crackles through the dead leaves, blows them in a twirling dance and the whisper carries across the clearing.

“When?” He reaches out for the shadow too, trying to trap the voice in his palm. He wants to see Cole grow up, he wants to be there for his first day of school, wants to buy him a dog, take him on a road trip and sees him off to college. He wants to be a good father to his son.

“Three and three and three more for each finger on your hand.”

Hank feels a ghost of a kiss pressed to the base of his thumb where his life line ends. He blinks and the tightly wound thread snaps back.

He’s kneeling by the site of the crash, hair golden again, soaked to the bone; rain keeps lashing his sore muscles, left hand buried in the ground. His eyes can’t seem to find the treeline anymore, a blurry shape on the horizon further from him than he could walk in a day. Instead, his gaze fixates on the bluish lips of his son.

Cole draws a sharp breath with the first blare of sirens in the distance.

* * *

The room is quiet, blinds drawn shut and the fading sunlight filters through in thin shafts drawing dots on the library, warmly caressing the dusty spines.

Hank’s sitting on the lumpy couch, next to a coffee stain of Cole’s own making from when he tripped over his own lanky legs as a clumsy teen. The whiskey glass is set on the table and the ice hasn’t started melting yet. Wiping the dog hair off his pants with nervous hands, he reaches for it just to have something to hold.

He’s fifty-three, going on four, and he knows this is the day when the world stops spinning one more time.

That morning when he saw his own reflection staring back at him in his bathroom mirror, he could read the years in the creases of his face. _ Cheer up, dad, _ the note above the sink would say. Hank would try to pull up his lips into a smile but the shadows that have been lurking in the periphery for the past fifteen years were getting closer.

He lets his eyes wander around the living room. It’s a space well lived in; somewhere in the midst of his chaotic life, he’s managed to build a home here. 

The wooden table has a dent on the far edge where Cole tried out his baby teeth until one of the loose ones fell out and Cole cried his heart out at the sight of the white pearl lying next to a bowl of cereal. A framed photo of them up at the Manistee forest— waving into the camera, carrying heavy backpacks and tired smiles— hides the bit of wall where Cole first expressed his artistic tendencies with a bold red crayon and a fancy creative method which involved a lot of smudging. There’s another one— of Cole on his high school graduation day with Hank’s arm wrapped proudly around him, Jessie holding their son’s hand, hangs next to it. The postcard Cole sent to him when he was spending the summer holidays with Jessie and her boyfriend in Europe. The polaroid he took before the gadget broke of Cole sleeping with puppy Sumo held carefully close to his chest. A pile of children books gathering dust among his collection of crime thrillers, _ Guess How Much I Love You _ next to Hakan Nesser. Little Nutbrown Hare from the cover points out to Hank love in all the mismatched strings of memories tangled up in the corners of the house.

Letting out a sigh, he pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. Everything that counts has been sown into Cole’s heart and he’ll be carrying it with him. He had the chance to watch his son grow into a fine young man whose kindness and wits will find him a good place in the world.

_ Hank. _

The whispers in his ear grow louder, yet they do not break the rhythm of the kitchen clock ticking briskly in the other room. They gnaw at the edge of his mind, slowly unraveling the thread until it’s weakened and tattered.

_ See my fingers, straight and tall, three and three and three once more. _

Hank presses harder at the aching spot between his furrowed brow.

_ Little finger at the end, make it stiff, make it bend. Come home, little lion. _

Taking a large gulp out of his glass, he tries to drown out the insistent buzzing. The shadows are closing in on him, they scratch their pointed nails against the base of his skull to sharpen them. He’s been hearing them for weeks now, growing bolder with the anniversary of the accident approaching.

He feels the pull at his insides, terrifyingly distinct, and the thin membrane keeps slicing through him, inch by inch, separating him from the reflection. He can’t tell which version is real anymore, the one sitting in his living room, surrounded by the years filled with laughter or the one kneeling in a ditch, holding a lifeless body.

_ Fingers are for work and play, put them all away. _

Cole’s laughing face twists into a grotesque grimace, it twists and twists until all his white baby pearls fall to the forest floor, burrowing in the pine needles and the blood gets everywhere. It trickles down Hank’s hand, droplets soaking into the earth which hungrily swallows them down before opening up its rotting jaw and biting off his fingers.

Red spots spatter over the bedroom wall and Hank walks over to inspect the body, a textbook murder scene, the knife sticks out of the victim’s back. The person is distorted, the arm popped out of the socket as they tried to reach the blade but they couldn’t grasp it - their fingers are missing. The body turns its head with a loud crack and Hank is staring into his own eyes.

He falls head first into them until he’s holding Cole again, trying to keep him from slipping out of the bleeding stumps that remain of his hands. Cole’s eyes are turned inside out, unseeing, his body small, almost as if he’s barely six again.

Hank jumps out of his seat and throws the glass at the shadow slithering its way into his ear. It breaks against the pictures on the wall, an angry stain stands out among the happiest moments of his life. The shards disperse in the air, floating in a space devoid of gravity, reflecting the beams coming in through the blinds, the light bends, starts pulling them in, twists on itself until there’s nothing but the dark.

He breathes out, focusing on the heartbeat still hammering away in his ears. Cole is safe.

_ It’s time. _

The shadows grow denser, coming together in a tight coil, and a familiar figure materializes in front of him. The creature is wrapped in a veil, shimmering in its blurry lines, not letting him see more than a glimpse of what’s beneath. Save for the sharp smile that graces their unreadable face.

“Hello, Hank.”

The glass shards fall down and scatter around the room.


	2. Chapter 2

The clock in the kitchen keeps a steady beat as the light slowly flows in again. The room is cradled in a twilight embrace, holding its breath like the sky, silent right before a storm rolls in.

The human stands in the middle of the glittering chaos, broken pieces sprinkled around him like a summoning circle. He’s been expecting the visitor.

His back straight, he draws himself up to his full height and towers over the mess he’s made, hand still clutching a phantom glass, muscles locked tight in a mimicry of a lunge. It’s unlike the last time, kneeling and crying, soaking up the blood of the forest, begging. Connor thinks he looks like one of the marble statues of the Ancient Greeks— a moment captured still in its perfection. The low light gravitates toward him, a halo of silver hair adorning his graceful features. 

“You’re here.” Hank’s voice carries the weight of fifteen years spent marking time.

The illusion is broken and the human sighs and lets his shoulders slump and hand fall, a sculpture brought to life only to be beaten down by it.

“Do you understand what I’m here for?”

“My eternal damnation, I’d say.” Hank waves his hand around the room, dismissively. “I’d offer you a drink but…” He trails off.

Hank’s behavior catches Connor off guard; the unpredictability of the arrangement stirs a minute tendril of curiosity inside him, something he’s not used to.

“You’ve been waiting for me,” Connor finds himself wondering without any reason driving his words. 

“Hell, there wasn’t a minute I didn’t think of you since I last saw you.”

The figure of speech feels wrong as it collides with Connor’s form, like an echo of a confession uttered under entirely different circumstances. Hank is a passing ship, a soul that warmed up in his fingers for barely a fraction of eternity. Except, he’s been reaching for Connor, clinging to the thread that connected them since they parted. Connor’s never lost sight of him.

“Do you not resent me?”

Hank runs a hand down his face, exhaustion written into his movements. “Sometimes. But you gave me my son back. You let me raise him into a good man.”

“I’ve felt your prayers.” Connor felt every single one call of Hank’s soul over the past years like a tentative caress. “Most people try to forget me.”

“Yeah, well.” Hank scratches the back of his head. “I’ve been taught to give thanks to the folks holding my life in their hands.”

“She was a wise woman— Aileen. I was very fond of her.”

“She worshipped you.” Hank clenches his fingers into a fist. “And she feared you.”

“To love something is to fear it,” Connor says because it is true.

Hank peers at him, from under the furrow of his brow, like he’s trying to see him, or to see inside him; Connor doesn’t know.

“Little lion, that’s what she called you.” He heard Aileen’s prayers, too. She only ever wished for a good life for her beloved boy.

“She used to say I had the strength of a lion. And its mane of hair, too.”

Connor thinks about the strength of Hank’s faith, so genuine it called to him as soon as he tasted the first drop of Hank’s devotion.

“You’re not little anymore.”

The human smiles— it’s short-lived but honest and it makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. “No, I suppose not.”

Hank shifts on his feet. “It’s not fair.”

Connor almost feels something akin to disappointment. Hank’s only human, after all; Connor knew it was only a matter of time that this is how the story unfolds. No promised soul ever goes peacefully.

“You seem to know everything about me but I don’t have the foggiest of what you look like.” Hank looks at him again, closely, as if he’s trying to meet his eyes but the image keeps slipping out of his grip. “Wanna know who I’m getting into bed with.”

That is unusual— the human’s been occupying Connor’s attention for less than a blink of an eye, yet he’s managed to subvert Connor’s expectations like none of the lost that came before him.

“You would be the first one who dared ask to see me.”

“What do I have to lose?”

Connor flashes him a smile even though Hank can’t see it. The dry tone of the man’s voice is not bitter, just resigned, which is weirdly refreshing.

He steps back and lifts the veil that’s been melded into his aura, rendering his form impossible for a human mind to grasp. Connor waits for Hank’s eyes to adjust, for his vision to cleanse itself of the hazy film coating the sclera.

Hank blinks a few times and his pupils dilate as he takes Connor in. Connor doesn’t look human. He hasn’t been human, if he ever was, for millennia. Lifting his hand, Hank touches the outline of his horns, his tail swishes through the air behind him. A creature made in the image of the ever-changing tales, people’s perception modeling his silhouette into one of the monsters that come crawling from under the bed.

Yet Hank doesn’t move back with his face twisted in horror. His eyes carefully rove over Connor’s body, not betraying any emotion, save for his eyebrow twitching slightly upwards.

“Is it all you’ve imagined?” Connor doesn’t know why he’s allowed this, why he’s let Hank see him. His actions are never driven by his own desires— he doesn’t have wants. Still, there’s something about the human that makes him want to know more.

“You look like one of my grandmother’s stories.” Hank meets his gaze, unwavering. “Familiar.”

Connor tucks that word into the back of his mind, keeps it hidden and safe where he can’t lose it.

“Will you go willingly?”

Hank nods. “Yes.”

“Would you wish for more time? If you could?” That curiosity which ties him to the human gets the better of him once more.

“What I’ve been given is more than I could’ve hoped for.”

Connor can feel Hank’s soul reaching for him in a last grateful prayer, in the middle of Hank’s living room, with barely two feet between them.

“What will happen to me now?” Hank asks, the open look on his face calling out to Connor.

“Your soul will be lost to time.”

The human’s brow draws together questioningly, wrinkles coming out on his forehead.

“You’ll never find peace and your soul will be wandering the void until the end of times. Alone.”

Hank snorts. “Don’t sugarcoat it for my sake.” Looking up at the ceiling briefly, he shakes his head at the paint coming off in flakes in the corner. “Where will you go?” 

Nobody’s ever asked him that question either.

“Where I always do. In between.”

Hank’s eyes find his again. He considers him for a moment and Connor can’t tell what’s going through the human’s mind. “Can’t I go with you?”

Connor has no need to breathe but a shaky exhale fights its way out of his throat nonetheless. Perhaps for the first time in as far as he can remember, he doesn’t know what to do. The pull that tugs at him and directs his course of actions to feed the void always nipping at his heels is weakened by the depth of Hank’s faith in him. It’s Hank’s thread that yanks at the empty space inside him, the one he neglected for so long.

“No human’s ever set foot in my realm.”

“Sounds like both of us could use some company.”

Connor’s never considered to take a soul with him. That was not his purpose between the worlds. He was a drover; none of the souls were supposed to stay with him. None of them chose to stay with him.

Hank still doesn’t move back, still regards Connor with sincerity, unafraid. He should be, Connor thinks, he should be afraid. Instead of bowing in front of him, like that day in the woods, Hank’s back remains straight, resembling an equal more than a lost spirit.

“Take me with you.” Hank reaches his hand for him and before Connor thinks to move away, it clasps his shoulder.

Connor’s not in Hank’s living room anymore. A whirl of vivid colors and images sucks him in, flashing faster than his mind can grasp, it takes him to the time before the emptiness in his chest, before the days filled with shadows and agony of desperate souls. 

He’s in a garden full of red roses, blooming at their peak, the sun caressing his face and adorning his shoulders with errant freckles. He can smell the sweetness in the air, feel the light breeze blowing from the south. The green embrace welcomes him, opens up for him like a home.

The sunlight breaks over the glinting surface of the water, with the clear blue sky trapped in the reflection. He walks over to the shore, leaves of grass bending under his feet without his form willing them to shape to accommodate a semblance of his weight. His body feels real, heavy.

The figure he sees wavering in the water looks human. He lifts up his hand and they mirror his movements. He watches tears well up in their deep brown eyes— his eyes— and fall down, causing gentle ripples to ruin the image.

There is a woman, dark and regal, waving to him from the other side of the pond. A tall man with sharp grey gaze stands next to her, smiling. They call out to him and call him by his name.

_ Connor.  _

Connor blinks and he’s looking into Hank’s bright eyes.

“You looked-” Hank searches Connor’s face, his piercing gaze peeling away Connor’s mask layer by layer. “I thought I saw-”

Connor doesn’t know if what he remembered was a memory, a glimpse into a life before, but he’s found a stone long forgotten, sitting at the base of his skull, waiting to be rediscovered.

“Connor,” he says, trying the syllables out in his mouth, feeling the way they slip down his tongue. He hasn’t done that, not for a very long time, almost forgot the sound of it. “That’s my name. Connor.”

The human had pulled his hand away. Connor wouldn’t mind having that warm weight on him, it was not entirely unpleasant. Hank’s eyes glisten as the pond of the rose garden reflected the sky. It’s uncanny, a mortal wielding that kind of power in his touch.

He is not supposed to take the soul with him. He is not and yet, his first selfish desire rises to the surface and he thinks about feeling that spark again, about the human touching him. Connor calls upon the shadows and he takes them home.

* * *

Connor’s not plunged into the dark this time; the shadows curl up and transform into a mirror which reflects the last impression embedded into the lines of his aura. He watches Hank’s face come alive. It takes him a moment before he can see past Connor.

“Where are we?”

He couldn’t have known this is where the road would take them. His world keeps changing along with the time and never looks quite the same after he returns.

“Home,” Connor says, because they are.

Hank’s living room is caught in a perfect illusion of itself. Not a thing out of place, except the glass still stands on the table, untouched, and the kitchen clock stopped filling the silence with its precise strikes.

Hank steps away, looking around with his brow furrowed in confusion— or suspicion, rather. Connor knows it won’t take long for him to figure out the trick. The human moves towards the wall, touches the stain that isn’t there anymore, traces his index along the frame of a photo of his son smiling with his front tooth missing.

“We aren’t really here, are we?”

“No.” Connor sees the pain in the crow’s feet of Hank’s face as he turns away from the pictures. “We are someplace else.”

“Is this where you go? Snooping around the collection of other people’s memories?”

“No.” He doesn’t want Hank to think his intention was to leech onto his pain. The fact that he shouldn’t care or have any wants escapes him. “This was all you.”

“What do you mean?”

“It must’ve been you whose will shaped this place. I don’t know why.”

Hank lets out a loud exhale through his nose and his nostrils flare. “Well, nothing like home.” He goes back to the couch and plops down, old springs creaking under his weight.

“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable, hm?” Hank pats the seat next to him.

Connor treads lightly, his movements hesitant, stepping into unfamiliar territory. “You know I can’t stay.”

“More souls to collect?” Hank’s dismissive, without any mean glint to his eyes.

“To see them off.” Connor sits down next to him. “You are the only one I ever took for myself.”

“You have a way of making a man feel special.”

And now, Hank grins, the first genuine, unbidden smile directed at Connor, the gap between his front teeth peeking through and Connor feels it worming its way into the niche in his chest, finding its home there. 

“Well,” Connor says with a frown, “you are.”

It’s Hank’s turn to hesitate, looking at Connor wide-eyed, electric blue almost swallowed by dark depths. A frozen smile widens a fraction.

“Alright, demon. Connor.” Hank shakes his head, mirth hiding in the corners of his mouth. “Careful there, or I might think you like me.”

Connor doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s not supposed to like anything. He thinks he does like Hank. “I should go,” he says instead.

“When will I see you again?”

Connor doesn’t think he’ll be able to stay away for long. “Soon.”

He dissolves into shadows right before Hank’s hand reaches him. He feels a pang of regret following him into the void.

* * *

Connor feels slimy, demanding tendrils pulling him back like they don’t want to let him go. He’s never felt the need to shake off their grasp, content to dwell in their embrace long after the last soul was swallowed in the ravenous pit.

Hank’s standing by the window, overlooking the backyard. The hammock on the back porch does not budge a smidge, and neither do the leaves on the dark trees. A dog house, empty; a bright green bicycle by the steps, forgotten.

“Don’t you ever get lonely?”

Hank speaks without turning around to see if Connor’s there, he knows. The thread that intertwines their fates was woven into them, they are tied together until time crumbles.

“I don’t know how that feels. I’ve always been this way.”

Hank frowns, the grim sky makes his eyes shine. “And yet you agreed to take me in. A very human decision.”

“You made me remember something,” Connor blurts out before he can stop himself.

“Yeah?” Hank looks at him, curious.

“I think it was a… reflection, or a memory of a life before.”

“You mean you haven’t actually always been like this?”

“It was all I could remember before...” Connor hesitates, making sure there’s a distance between them, “before you touched me.”

Hank hums. He scratches the bridge of his nose. “It must be strange, not having your life composed of memories. Shit, that’s all we are. Memories.”

“You are more than that. A soul is a living, adapting thing, it can exist outside of it.”

“I guess you’d know.”

Connor gets a small smile again. He can’t pinpoint what it was that made him deserve one.

“Hey, what do you say I’ll show you some of mine?” Hank’s eyes crinkle at the corners.

Tilting his head, Connor beckons him to continue.

“I have plenty to share.” The man makes a sweeping gesture around the room, which breathes the history, spattered around in tiny dust grains. “All thanks to you.”

Hank doesn’t stop catching Connor by surprise, his grateful prayers wrapping around his form, making him more solid, more present.

“I want-” Does he? Could he? “I think I’d like that.” 

Hank’s gaze is bright and he seems to grow even taller, the house bends to accommodate him in its center, a star with his own orbit. Connor is easily swept away by his charm, leaning into his pulsing force without being able to pull away. He doesn’t know what will happen if they collide.

Hank takes him around the house, slowly, bit by bit dusting off the stories tied to each dent, each imprint. Over time, Connor grows to rely on the steady, rumbling voice that retells the memories with genuine emotions woven into it.

“You know, the first night back home after the accident,” Hank tells him, as he sits down on the bed, “I had Cole sleep here because I couldn’t imagine not having him with me. For the whole night. When so many things can happen in just a second.”

Shifting, Hank looks to the right side of the bed. 

“I didn’t sleep. Kept waiting for his breathing to cut off, his chest to stop rising.” He tries to smooth down the crumpled sheets. “I lied down next to him and just held him. So close I could feel him breathing. It was like,” his voice trails off, “holding him for the first time.”

Connor eyes Hank’s hand, a stark contrast against the white linen. He’d like to feel the skin with his own fingers, the fine little hairs petering out by the wrist. 

“How come?” He crosses his arms to keep them from reaching out.

“He was such a small, tiny thing when he was born.” Hank puts his hands back into his lap, looking down at them, flexing his fingers. “I have rough hands. Was afraid I’d hurt him.”

Connor decides he quite likes Hank’s hands. There seems to be a gentleness hidden in his touch.

“But when I hold him… His little heart was beating so strong. And he had some big lungs, that kid. I knew he was going to be okay, that nothing was going to break him. He was perfect.”

“A little lion, just like you.”

Hank looks at him, eyes shining, the heartlines written into his face. “My perfect little lion, yeah. I knew he would make it, that night I remembered. And I believed it. Still believe it.”

“He had you watching over him. Of course, he was going to make it.” Connor buries the fingers into his arms, holding himself, hoping it will satiate the inexplicable need crawling inside him. “The strength of your faith is unexcelled.”

“Well, shit,” Hank huffs, dragging a hand down his face. “You have a way with words, demon.” He smiles. A soft, quieter exhale in the space between them: “Thank you.”

Connor feels a click inside him, a shift like a wave that razes a city to the ground. 

There are no days in the shadow world; you can’t keep track of the passing of the time by decreasing daylight. Connor starts the hourglass with every new memory Hank shares with him. He counts the grains of time, measuring them by how long he’s been away from Hank. Hank and his entrancing orbit— everything revolves around him now.

When Connor comes back, he often finds Hank wandering around the house. Sometimes there’s a haunted look on his face as if he’s hearing something beyond Connor’s reach, looking into the distance, seemingly watching the dust particles dance around in the light that never changes intensity, perhaps counting his own grains.

Seeing Connor, however— it makes Hank light up, the light bending easily around him as it always does. He’s the center of the room, the center of Connor’s universe.

What Connor feels when that happens is a fragile brush of pleasure against his form. He doesn’t understand why it fills him up like nothing ever could before. He doesn’t understand a lot of things these days. 

“Welcome home,” Hank says and Connor’s ready to follow him like a sunflower turning its head towards the bright sun.

They are sitting on the couch, caught somewhere between dusk or dawn, like many times before. The room carries the last tones of Hank’s laughter as he finishes up a story about the dog, Sumo, making a habit of hiding Hank’s slippers in the most unexpected places.

“I may have won the battle but that damn dog won the war.” Hank’s tooth gap peeks through a joyous smile. 

“An honorable defeat, nonetheless.” Connor’s smiling too; Hank’s relentless humanity is contagious, Hank himself has seeped into Connor’s glowing veins.

Hank’s eyes are very close. Connor can see the lighter flecks of color breaking the clear blue ring, like the backs of ocean waves climbing to the top. If he moved, his thigh would press against Hank’s.

Hank’s looking at him, gaze caressing Connor’s face like he’s worth to be looked at. Connor’s come to terms with the turmoil swirling around inside him when Hank’s close— or, when he’s thinking about Hank, about him being close, about Hank touching him.

“Hey,” Hank speaks, softly. It doesn’t travel further than to Connor’s ears. “I wanted to ask-” a pause. “What did you remember?”

Connor knows what Hank’s asking. He hoped Hank would forget. “I- I don’t know. I can’t remember the way you do.” He begs Hank to understand. “I can’t give you back all that you’ve given me, not in the same way.”

“Doesn’t matter to me. I want to know, Connor.” Hank tilts his head. “I want to know you, too.”

“Hank-” Connor’s voice had never shaken before.

“Tell me.”

Exhaling, he tries to steady himself. This fleeting memory is all he has to give, even though he doesn’t quite know what to make of it. 

“There was... a garden. A garden with red roses and a pond. A woman and a man standing on the other side. I think they knew me or I knew them, before. I think they were important to me. A long time ago.” Connor thinks about how to phrase his next words. He can see his reflection in Hank’s eyes. Glowing and otherworldly, so unlike Hank. “And then, there was this face. It looked like mine but it couldn’t have been.”

“What did you feel when you looked at it?”

“Feel?” Connor’s lost in the depth of the ocean blue. He shouldn’t be able to cry, yet his vision’s turning blurry, the edges of Hank’s face softened. “I felt like I had a soul again. It was there, staring back at me with human eyes.”

“And you remembered your name.”

“They called it out to me,” Connor whispers. Something that was supposed to be torn out of him suddenly aches with a bright pang, swallowing him whole.

“Connor,” Hank wraps his name in kindness, he says it like it’s a word uttered with love, like Connor’s someone who could understand its meaning. 

Shifting even closer, Hank breathes out and shakes his head lightly. “You’re not all what I thought you’d be.”

Connor might be shaking, or there might be a hurricane coming through the house, tearing down everything in its path— he wouldn’t know.

“You keep taking my breath away,” Hank says like it isn’t him who turned Connor’s life upside down, who’s been a bolt from the blue, a spark to set fire to everything Connor’s known.

“Hank,” Connor’s voice is a warning this time. A red buoy out at the sea, watching over the line that shouldn’t be crossed. “I don’t think you know what I really am. You would never choose me if you knew.”

“Do you really think you’re unknowable?” Hank’s lips move, the corners turn upwards. Connor can’t look away. “You and I? Not that different.”

“Let me try something.” Lifting a hand from his lap, Hank reaches for him. His hand stops an inch from Connor’s face. He waits for permission.

“Please,” Connor gives in to the craving that’s burning him from the inside out since he last felt Hank’s hand on him.

If you don’t push farther and cross the line, how will you know if the current isn’t the one that is going to steer your boat back to your long-lost home?

One moment, Connor’s a soulless being, untouchable; the next, Hank’s rough palm is pressed against his cheek. A thumb sweeps over his cheekbone, calluses imprint into the soft flesh.

“I knew I didn’t make that up.” Hank lets out a small, breathless laugh.

Connor’s reflection in Hank’s eyes does not glow, it’s matte, modeled out of clay, a breath of life clenched inside his ribcage. He doesn’t need to form the space around him to hold his weightless body, he sinks down into the lumpy mattress, can feel the springs pushing into the meat of his thighs.

Taking a careful breath, letting his lungs expand slowly, he leans more into Hank.

“There you are.” Hank’s exhale is hot and burns on Connor’s lips.

A single word forms at the front of Connor’s mind. His voice breaks at the end. It ends up being a question. “Human?”

“Connor.” A decisive, firm response. “You’re Connor.”

The warmth of Hank’s touch seeps into Connor’s skin, which seems to only grow hotter and hotter the longer Hank doesn’t pull away. Hank’s gaze flicks to his lips and Connor’s human heart sings, creaks, with the sudden blood flow.

“Huh. I couldn’t see them before.”

“What?” Connor gulps, a foreign dryness in his throat.

Hank’s fingers on his cheek move, tracking a pattern that Connor can’t figure out. “A goddamn sky on you.” Hank’s thumb stops just under his bottom lip, covering a mark Connor can only imagine is tucked under there.

“What else do you see?” Connor wants to know. He wants to become more of what Hank sees in him.

“Someone who’s been lost for a long time, looking for a way home.”

Connor’s fragile bones tingle with the truth of it: Hank already knows him, reads him with an ease of a soul that found its match. The walls inside him clench, desperately, around an emptiness, around the core ripped out of him. Connor may look human, but he doesn’t have a soul.

“I’m home,” Connor says because he is.

Hank’s strength has been a guiding light since the moment he first felt it, a brush against the edge of his consciousness. It followed him everywhere and Connor’s held tight onto that string connecting their fates.

Hank has been many of his firsts. When his lips press against Connor’s, it’s the first time somebody’s touched him there. Hank teaches him what yearning means, his whole being burning like a bright torch, a longing so intense he wouldn’t know how to go back to the way he was before.

Hank’s lips are soft, warm, they know how to move and Connor’s mouth opens under him like a blooming primrose. It must be the most natural feeling in the world, a human connection so simple yet holding thousands by their throats, gasping for breath. 

Hank feels, he feels,  _ oh _ , Connor couldn’t describe it if he tried. His tongue is a weight pressing down, flicking against the roof of his mouth, slick and hot, brilliant. Connor can feel a heat wave licking his body, from the tip of his toes to the top of his head. Low, steady pulsing gathers in the nook of his stomach. He pushes back.

“Hey,” Hank yelps as Connor presses into him, pushing him into the cushions and climbs into his lap. The way Hank’s belly rubs against him creates sparks that set off over the long line of his body.

“Connor, take it easy.” Hank’s arm sneaks behind his back, fingers gripping his hip and holding him still.

“I’ve never wanted something this badly-” Connor tries to find Hank’s mouth. “I’ve never wanted.” He whispers the confession into the softness of Hank’s beard, tickling Connor’s lips in the most delicious way.

Hank’s touch is soothing, large palm smoothing down his spine, making him melt into it. “It’s alright. I got you.”

“Why?” Connor asks, the tumult of confusion, desire, incredulity, a thick mass moving around inside him. “Why do you want to know me? Why do you want me?”

It was him who brought Hank here, separated him from his son, gave him no way out of this house. It was him who stole Hank’s soul.

Hank takes Connor’s face in his hands, holds him with a care that makes Connor want to scream, act out, fight, or perhaps just give in.

“I just do.” Hank’s eyes might truly burn through him.  _ I just do. _ “It’s not like I expected any of this. But I’m not gonna question it.” Connor grasps at the surety of Hank’s smile. “We have all the time in the world to figure this shit out, right?”

“Right.”  _ You are the best thing that ever happened to me _ , he breathes wordlessly into Hank’s mouth.

Once Hank finally starts touching him, he doesn’t stop.


	3. Chapter 3

Hank slips in and out of consciousness. The shadows in the room seem to grow longer each time he blinks. He doesn’t need to sleep anymore, not really, but sometimes it’s nice to remember the simple habits from his life before. He’s been staring at the picture of Cole, the one with the missing front tooth, taken a year after the accident. 

He wonders if he’s done enough for him. Whether Cole was ready to continue on without him. He can’t tell how much time has passed. It might’ve been days, months, years; for all he knows, Cole might have a son of his own now, a little golden-haired boy. He hopes Cole will never have to hear the hitch in his son’s breathing before it stops. 

Hank feels his lips tingle. An imprint of Connor’s mouth leaving a mark, physical evidence, a reminder that stops him from losing a sense of self when Connor’s away.

Connor has been on Hank’s mind a lot, too. An ancient immortal creature, supposedly incapable of empathy, showing kindness and mercy, ever-changing right before Hank’s eyes. Connor has a light in him where is supposed to be only darkness, glowing warmly and stronger with each passing grain of time.

Hank didn’t expect to fall into him so easily; there was nothing about this whole ordeal that could be anticipated. Still, feeling his eyes slip closed, he can’t help but think this is where the road was supposed to lead him to from the very beginning.

_ Hank. _

A low voice, buzzing at the back of his mind, slithers into his thoughts. He recognizes its touch. He felt it before, moments before Connor was supposed to come for him. He thought it was the demon calling him back then, but now, he can tell the difference because he knows Connor.

_ Little lion, come to us. _

The presence is like sticky black tar pouring out of every corner of the house. Nothing like Connor’s bright, curious nature, reaching out to him, unforceful, a gentle call of an equal. 

Hank sits up straight in the bed, alert. He can feel the shadows reaching for him, sees long claws waving at him from the corner of his eye, just like he did before. He should’ve known, should’ve been more careful. Should’ve paid attention to that little dark stain lingering in the back of his mind, sitting there since the first time he touched Connor with the intent to see him.

_ Alone, I see. Our little helper finally went about doing our bidding. It seemed like he would stay cooped up in this pitiful mind palace with you forever. _

The whispers grow louder, beckoning Hank to listen, to succumb. He’s hit with a smell of blood, freshly spilled, iron and hot, one that you can’t scrub out of your nostrils for weeks. It’s familiar, he’s lived with it for the better part of his life. Each new case, a new layer of that murderous odor, covering the old one, letting it rot away and pile up; it never fully went away.

Hank grits his teeth. “What do you want?”

He knows how this goes, he’s played the negotiator part before, but feeling a tug at his chest, he wonders if he even has something to offer. His soul does not belong to him anymore, after all. 

_ The souls we’re owed. The vow to be kept. The work to be done. _

The void closes in on him. It’s his first scene, he’s bright-eyed, eager, only a little bit over thirty years on Earth and thinks it belongs to him. The woman is gutted on the floor by his feet, face-up, eyes unseeing. She has not been arranged delicately, her body was left the way it fell down, a starfish out of water. Hank sees the flower twin tattoo on her ribcage and tastes the vomit in his mouth.

_ You know the work needs to be done better than anyone. _

Hank’s first case— they didn’t catch the killer before he killed again. Hank remembers the purple beetle tattooed on the woman’s left ankle too, burned into his memory. He didn’t talk to Connor about it yet.

Hank shakes his head, tries to focus on that imprint of Connor’s lips, a fading sensation, to guide him out of his nightmares.

“What do you need from me?” 

He doesn’t ask who they are, the voices; he can feel the deepest darkness snuffing out the light, the wildest hunger devouring anything living, gluttony unparalleled, unchallenged. 

_ We should smite you like a disgusting pest that you are. Human. Weak. Useless. Trouble. _

Hank steels himself. The hatred, thick and heavy, wraps around him and squeezes, enveloping him, making the vision darken around the edges. “Still, it seems like you need something from me.”

The whisper hisses, it overlaps like a rising tirade of spiteful rattlesnakes.

_ Watch your tongue. We could erase you, not a trace of you left, not one memory. _

Hank sees the dents on the coffee table smoothing down. His face disappears from the photographs on the wall. Every place Hank’s ever touched— rewritten, turned over, until he’s nothing, not even a memory. The void takes all of him. 

_ The one you call Connor. He’s disobeyed. _

The blood in Hank’s veins freezes.

_ He doesn’t honor the deal we made. The flow of souls. -barely trickling. We are HUNGRY. _

The word fills Hank’s mind entirely, echoes like thousands of mirrors breaking at once, the shards falling and falling, a booming, nerve-wracking sound that leaves him gasping. He can feel the sharp, jagged points jamming into the meaty walls of his brain, drawing blood, a pain so piercing, so overpowering, like nothing he’s ever experienced.

_ -thinks he can defy us. A stupid human sentiment. _

They know Connor’s name. Connor’s not safe.

_ All for what? You? Worthless. _

It’s happening again. Hank’s watching the car crash into him from the side and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. 

_ -you took him away. Made him break the vow. _

The metal rolls up, crumples up like a sheet of paper. Hank’s crushed under its weight and he can’t breathe.

_ He hid himself from us. -can’t reach him. YOU will get his soul for us. _

“No!” Hank’s voice resonates between the walls. A panic inside him covers it all in bubble wrap; he can’t hear anything but the loud pumping in his temples. The whispers stop. A terrible quiet settles over the space.

_ No? _

Hank trembles, fists drawn tight at his side. “No. I won’t do that to him.”

He prays. He prays with all his might for Connor to be safe.

_ -you think he would care for you the same? He promised your soul to US. _

Hank understands. He knows now that Connor didn’t have a choice. A puppet on a string of his master. His first act of free will was choosing Hank.

_ Your soul for the boy. _

The void swirling around him speaks in Connor’s voice, distorted, all wrong. It’s mocking him, twisting the words, mixing his memories.

He saved my son. I would do it again. Hank prays and prays, his being calling out to anything that would hear him.

_ Your soul for the one you call Connor. _

Hank feels it like a knife wedged into his heart. “No,” quieter, this time.

_ You’ll get me his soul and you’ll see your son again. The soul will be yours. Anything you wish for. _

‘No’ is on his lips. Shaking, too weak to come out. 

_ See my fingers, straight and tall. They don’t lie. A wish for you, little lion. _

Something in Hank cracks, breaks irreparably. The hollow where a soul lies, coiled tight, and someone else’s. He falls to his knees as the light sneaks into the room again.

* * *

He feels a light touch on his shoulder. Smell sweet and clean, a distant summer rainfall, brushes up against him and wipes away the rotting blood and gutted insides.

“Hank.” Connor’s voice has a concerned tilt to it, but it sounds right. It sounds like him. Hank’s shoulders slump with relief.

“Let me help you up.”

Connor grabs him under his armpits and lifts him up like he weighs nothing, halfway drags him to bed. Hank’s legs can’t hold him up and he trusts Connor to carry his weight for him. He lays Hank down on his back, curling up next to him, every point of contact an anchor.

Cool fingers brush hair out of his face, fingertips pressing against the arch of his brow. The feeling slowly comes back to Hank’s body with the last tones of whispers dying away in his mind. He cranes his neck, lips catching on the edge of Connor’s palm, pressing a kiss to it.

“What happened?”

Hank shakes his head. His tongue is tied and Cole’s happy gap-toothed smile is glowing behind his eyelids.

“Fuck if I know.” It hurts, to look into Connor’s kind brown eyes and see his son’s blue bright gaze. He swallows the lump in his throat, leaning more into Connor.

“Alright,” Connor says carefully. He must know Hank’s keeping the truth to himself. 

Connor smiles and the seams trying to hold Hank’s broken form together rip like a thinly woven web. He’s watched Connor practice that smile over the course of his past visits, until he taught to let it sit naturally on his face; now he’s so generous with it when it comes to Hank.

Hank can’t let that smile fade. Connor’s face is close and Hank’s eyes almost go crossed as he tries to follow the path of his freckles over the bridge of his nose. The palm pressed to Hank’s cheek is smooth and Connor looks human again.

“Hey, Con?”

The answer is a quiet hum while Connor shifts next to him, sliding a leg between Hank’s thighs. 

“What you said before… Do you still have one? A soul?”

Connor’s hand travels around Hank’s hip and up his spine. “I do.”

“Oh.” Hank gulps. Connor’s face is open, honest and Hank feels a jagged claw scratching his insides, piercing them, making them spill. “Is it yours?”

A nod, delicate wrinkles forming on Connor’s forehead. “To keep it, I had to rip it out and separate it from me.”

“That must’ve hurt.”

A puff of hot air against Hank’s lips. “I can’t remember. I’ve forgotten how it was to feel. There was only void. Until you.”

“Shit.” Hank has to close his eyes, he can’t bear the eager softness laid out bare in the line of Connor’s brow.

“I’m sorry.” Connor presses his forehead against Hank’s. A grave, desperate tone, like he needs to get through to Hank. “I’m sorry I can’t get yours back.” Connor’s hand pushes at the center of Hank’s chest like he wants to reach for his soul, erase the mark burned onto it. “Sorry I can’t make it right. I’d give you a thousand more wishes but your soul was claimed, there’s nothing else I could take in return.”

“Sweetheart,” Hank’s voice breaks. The crack expands, keeps getting bigger and drawing him in, a black hole devouring him from the inside.

“I can’t do anything.” Connor's own voice rises higher, frustration and anger climbing on top. “You can’t ever leave here. Just as me, for as long as I exist.” 

A long exhale. “No new memories,” Connor says, quietly, resigned.

Hank puts his hand over Connor’s, resting on his sternum. Neither of them can fix this. It doesn’t mean Hank can’t give Connor all of himself, soul or not. “We’ll make new memories here, together.”

It’s a risk that Hank’s here. Connor decided to take him with him even though he wasn’t supposed to. Now he has to pay. Hank thinks he knows why Connor keeps him, albeit it’s dangerous, stupid, _ human _. He hears a far-off echo of the whispers. If he’s right, it might be more than he can take.

His thoughts grapple and whirl around his head, Cole’s loud pearly laughter, Connor’s surprised little giggle, like he didn’t know he could laugh before, overlapping, tearing him apart. Hank needs to quiet them down or he’ll lose the last bit of sanity. He tilts his face and kisses the miserable, lovely line of Connor’s mouth.

Connor immediately melts into it, lips smooth and pliable, the harsh words turning into soft sighs. 

“I want you,” Hank confesses. “Need you.”

“You have me.” Connor takes over the kiss, pushes Hank deeper into the mattress as he kneels with the knee between Hank’s legs, hovering over him.

“Tell me what to do.” His hands slide under the hem of Hank’s shirt, fingertips dancing excitedly over the soft flesh there. 

Hank wonders if it’s a Connor thing, want to be told how he’s doing, or if it’s the lack of experience, insecurities that make him rely on Hank’s voice.

“Don’t think too much. You’re good.”

The way Connor’s smile glows, brilliant, makes him think it’s the former.

“Tell me,” Connor insists, clever hands wandering higher and pinching Hank’s nipple. Hank takes a sharp breath. He should’ve known it would be like this. 

Connor’s ever curious, ever-learning, trying to read Hank, adapt to anything new Hank shows him. Hank wants Connor to figure him out. He needs Connor to reach inside and mend him.

“Fuck. Okay. Come on, undress me.”

Connor doesn’t have to be told twice, helping Hank out of his clothes with his efficient, elegant movements, he has him laid out before him, eyes roaming and hands clenching.

Hank knows he has no need to feel self-conscious, Connor’s seen deep inside him and he’s chosen him, as incredible as it sounds. Still, when Connor looks at him like he’s really seeing him, it makes him want to shrink down and hide. It also makes something pleasant churn up low in his belly, whir, and hum, like a damn butterfly.

Connor won’t stop touching him. Hank feels every caress, every brush of his fingers, lips, like a searing mark, it makes him forget everything else.

“Am I doing this right?” Connor looks up from where he has his mouth wrapped around Hank’s nipple, pink, perky, sore from the hardness of Connor’s teeth.

“Perfect,” Hank pants out, the small tug from Connor sending sparks of pleasure in ripples through the surface of his body. “You can touch me,” a gasp as Connor bites down, “anywhere you want, you know.”

“Anywhere?” A small furrow appears in Connor’s brow. 

“Yeah.” Hank takes one of his hands and guides it lower, dragging the smooth palm over his dick. It twitches at the contact and Connor watches, intrigued. 

“I think I remember.”

Connor moves his other hand to the front, touches the space between his own legs. Hank squints and his breath hitches. He’s never been able to see Connor clearly. Even after the veil was lifted, Connor’s form was hard to grasp, glowing lines and planes of smooth skin. But now, he’s the most human Hank’s ever seen him.

“Oh,” is all Connor says. Hank watches him come into focus, pretty and curved slightly to his left hip. 

“Ha, yeah, that’s the gist of it.” He laughs, breathless, sweating at his temples. “Does it feel good?”

“Yes, I think so. It makes me want you.”

It tugs at Hank like a hook in his stomach before the plunge. He _ craves _Connor. “Uh, great, good,” he says intelligently. “You could-” He moves Connor’s hand on him lower, over his balls and a bit further until Connor touches him where it makes Hank tingle with anticipation.

“Now why would you say ‘touch me anywhere’ when you knew exactly where you wanted me.” Connor grins, cheeky— it suits him. Hank’s seeing more and more of who Connor must have been before, he’s sure of it. 

“You’re brilliant, sweetheart. Thought you would solve that puzzle on your own.”

The sound of Connor’s happy laughter falls over them, a refreshing mizzle. It aches; it sings. 

Hank’s body bends under Connor’s fingers, pliable, Connor’s world making up its own rules and reknitting the mesh as Connor sees fit. Hank’s taking them in, one by one, until he’s trembling, stretched to the limit.

“I think this is one of my favorite places to touch you.” Connor curls up his fingers and strokes Hank’s walls gingerly, the spot which makes Hank arch under him, belly rising and chest heaving. 

“Connor,” a higher pitch as he’s nearing the peak. 

Connor doesn’t let up, and Hank’s gripping the sheets as the pressure builds and builds, it coils like a tight knot, just to the point where Hank thinks he can’t bear it anymore. Then, a mere moment before tipping over, it stops. Connor withdraws his fingers and leaves Hank empty, terribly so.

“Tell me, Hank, what should I do next?” Connor’s hand is steady but his eyebrows twitch. The expression too much on the sweet side for Connor not to be affected, curious, too.

“I’m sure you know,” Hank gets out, clenching his jaw, and spreads his legs even wider, his large thighs rising like snowy hilltops on both sides. 

Connor’s mouth goes slack, pupils blown so wide Hank can’t see the warm brown ring of his iris anymore. His fingers grip the soft meat of Hank’s legs tightly. The touch of his left hand is scorching from where it’s just been. Hank finds the realization turning the last of his bones to liquid.

“Do you?” Connor pulls and yanks Hank closer to him, holding him in his strong grip. He moves Hank’s body around with such certainty, so little effort. Hank’s flush against him and panting.

“Please.” Hank might be shaking from the sheer power Connor holds over him.

When Connor takes him, Hank’s soul pulses like a newborn star; it flutters inside his ribcage, he can physically feel it reaching out to Connor.

Connor is trembling too, leaning over him, every inch of their bodies touching, skin to skin. Hank struggles to keep his eyes open because Connor is looking at him and he doesn’t want to miss a second of it. He doesn’t remember being looked at like that in his life before all this, like he’s a wonder. Never did he think it would happen in this place.

Connor’s eyes have little crinkles around them, they might have been laugh lines, a long time ago. There’s a sheen of sweat above his brow, Hank’s chest constricts. He lifts his head, cranes his neck to kiss him there, a human deviancy of Connor’s body stealing his breath away.

Huffing against him, Connor easily leans down and finds Hank’s mouth, kisses him slowly, tenderly, and then with the force of a deluge. They move together, a rocking ship at sea, lifting higher and higher on the waves. 

Hanks thinks he might implode, the light gathering like bolts before the storm in his lower abdomen, pulling in tightly, a tension ready to snap. Connor’s thrusts get deeper, faster, more ruthless in their accuracy with which he drags over that antsy spot inside Hank, making him cry out Connor’s name.

“You almost got me, honey,” Hank whispers against Connor’s lips, sliding smoothly against his spit-slick mouth.

Connor whines low in the back of his throat and delivers the final blow, biting down on the soft bit under the edge of Hank’s jaw. Hank grabs onto Connor as he falls apart completely, trusting his love to pick up the pieces and keep them safe. 

Connor’s rhythm falters as Hank clenches around him, pulling him in, and soon he spills warmly inside Hank, falling on top of him as Hank wraps his arms around Connor’s back, holding him close.

Hank strokes the line of Connor’s spine with one hand while Connor rests his cheek on Hank’s damp chest. He doesn’t seem to mind and Hank likes the comforting weight of a human body pressing him down.

“Hey, still good?” Hank moves his other hand to cup the curve of Connor’s ass.

“Yes. I don’t think that-” Connor presses a kiss to the soft side of Hank’s pec, a promise. “I’m never going to forget again.”

“Forget what?”

“How it is to feel.” 

Hank’s breath catches on its way to evening out, he tightens his hold around the person to whom he would willingly give his soul if he was asked to do so again.

They don’t stop touching as they drift off to sleep.

* * *

Hank doesn’t wake up to the morning rays kissing his skin and drawing him out of sleep. He does wake up with Connor warming up his side, a hand still placed at the center of his chest, as if guarding Hank’s soul.

The light coming sparsely in the room hits him just right and delicate shadows under his eyelashes shift like shimmery ripples running across the water’s surface. He doesn’t look like someone belonging at Hank’s side, yet Hank feels Connor’s solid form tied tightly around his core.

Hank remembers aching like this the first and the last time Cole drew his breath as he was holding him, different but all the same. Connor's fingers curl into a fist, hot on his naked skin, and the corner of his mouth jerks sideways, a simile of a smile.

A bizarre feeling— a light shining bright in his chest and the weight of the world on his shoulders, making him tremble with the force of it. Hank's no stranger to the fear that is licking at his heels. The name of that fear is Truth, growing roots around his heart. It comes with responsibility; once he acknowledges it, there's no going back.

Closing his fingers around Connor's fist, he knows Truth has been inevitable. He is in love with Connor.

Hank’s next breath is shaky, lighter, heavier. He loves, with all of his promised soul. The terrible crack has him bleeding out red on the white sheets.

His tongue rests like a lead stone in his mouth. He brings Connor's hand to his lips, presses a kiss to the knuckles. I love you. I'm sorry.

_ Lion, lion, little cub. Will you play with us? _

A sickening punch to his stomach, an odor of mold, pus, like a physical presence, blocks out any light, covers up the soft rhythm of Connor's pulse.

Hank can't breathe, the shadows have a strong grip on him— ribs are piercing his lungs, all the oxygen flowing out of him like a squeaky rubber toy.

_ Give us what we want and this little piggy can go home. _

Broken bones, ripped throats, vomit on the floor. Bodies torn to shreds. A child's head, cracked.

_ If not done, you get none. _

Hank squeezes Connor's hand tightly, the only point tying him to the present. The whispers brush against him, caress his cheeks with slimy, cold phantom touch.

_ Don't kiss and tell. _

A giggle, sharp like a fork scratching porcelain, has him gritting his teeth. It's gone as abruptly as it started. The sudden airflow sends his head spinning and he's catching his breath when Connor stirs next to him.

Connor. The fear twists, turns around until it grows an ugly head biting at his insides. He has to tell him.

"Hello." Connor burrows into his side even more, puffs hotly against Hank's neck.

"Hey, honey." Hank tugs at Connor's hand, brings his arm around his middle and pulls Connor on top of him. "Missed you," he murmurs into the nest of dark hair tickling his chin.

"I haven't gone anywhere." Connor stifles the laugh by placing his mouth on Hank's chest, lazily dragging it over the surface in almost-kisses.

The quiet settles over them. The simplicity of holding Connor in his arms— the wonderful genuineness of that moment overwhelms him, ties his tongue in a knot and doesn't let loose. He imagines a room where the light can shift, the dog barks behind closed doors and Cole's car pulls up in the driveway with the first holiday snow. The twinkle from the Christmas lights catches on the thin golden band around Connor's ring finger.

"Connor, there's something I have to tell you-"

Freeing his hand from Hank's grasp, Connor places it over Hank's mouth before he can continue. He watches him shake his head, nose brushes against Hank's sternum.

"Tell me this." Soulful eyes flit up to meet Hank's. "If you were free to leave, would you?"

The image of the room shatters. A life they would carve together slips through his open hands.

"I wouldn't blame you. Cole's still out there." Each word is like a thorn, fitted just under his fingernail— precise, painful.

Hank shifts, sitting up on the bed, supporting Connor's back to have him slide into Hank's lap. He feels clumsy, stumbling in both his movements and his thoughts.

"I don't want to lose you," Hank says because he doesn't know what else he could do to make this right. He can't say how he'll never be able to leave Connor because it would mean erasing a part of him. It pushes the thorn deeper.

"Hank, I know." Connor's touch is gentle, human. The panic wells up in him, building up with the soothing caress of Connor's cool hand on his heated cheek. "I know what you've been offered. Why you asked about my soul."

"Connor-"

"I understand, Hank."

Hank doesn't want him to understand. He wants him to push Hank away, to get as far from him as possible. Instead, Connor gathers Hank in his arms, strokes his hair, calm, careful, guides Hank's head to rest in the crook of his neck.

"I don't know what to do," Hank whispers, his voice breaking, like a dry leaf crumbles in an incautious hand. He thinks of the awkward fit of his grown-up son's hugs, of how he still calls three times a week to tell his dad he misses home. He wonders if he's stopped missing him by now. "I don't think I could leave you." It is as close as he gets.

Connor's fingers twist in his hair— they're trembling. Hank wishes he could open his heart to let Connor see because his mouth feels like it's stuffed full of cotton, swathing his tongue; Truth gets stuck on its way out.

“But I can’t keep you.” A kiss to Hank’s hairline. 

“No. Connor, don’t.” Hank lifts his head off Connor’s shoulder, meeting his eyes, swimming in the depth in those dark browns. 

“Thank you for all the memories you gave me.” Connor’s voice breaks too.

“Hey, none of that.” Hank grabs the back of Connor’s neck. “We’ll find another way. Together, remember?” Hank can see Connor slipping through the hands that are trying to reach him, his look far-off. 

“There shouldn’t be any ‘together’, you were never supposed to be here.” A smile of a porcelain doll, glazed and nonhuman-like. “You should go home, Hank.”

“I am home,” Hank says because he is. 

Connor gulps, shuts his eyes. 

“I’m not exchanging your soul for mine.” Squeezing Connor’s neck, he pulls him closer. “I’m not.” He kisses him. Roughly, desperately, trying to guide him back.

Connor doesn’t kiss him back, doesn’t sigh, doesn’t melt into it. Hank feels his blood boil, veins swell, the anxious hammering of his heart making his head spin. It’s happening too fast. Everything is happening too fast once more and he can’t stop the car skidding on ice. 

Connor pulls away, a glittering sheen over his empty gaze. Hank’s hanging onto him while the space around them is getting tighter, pressing from each side, the air thicker, harder to breathe in. The shadows gather, coil and writhe, the only pop of color Connor’s kissed lips.

Hank watches Connor’s hands disappear into the mass that’s starting to twist in the gap between them; the room gravitates towards the spot, blacker than ink, liquid, and flowing straight through Connor’s chest. Hank feels sick to his stomach. His vision is centered on the black hole swallowing the world inch by inch.

Connor’s hidden almost entirely as the kind curve of his mouth moves. “You’re not. I am.”

The car crashes and the room explodes.

Hank’s blinded as the bright white light hits him, enveloping him, piercing through his skull to the base of his spine. For a moment, he’s floating in the void, non-existent, neither there nor here. Nothing else matters but the persistent mark being burned onto his eyelids. Except, he’s still grasping Connor’s arms.

A gentle blow of air soothes the burn. His eyelashes that are melted together untangle. He blinks rapidly and the spots swimming in the line of his vision gradually flow away.

“All I have to offer,” a voice speaks softly, carefully building Hank up again. 

There’s a ball of light in Connor’s cupped hands. The colors keep shifting, Hank can’t seem to get a hold of one for long enough to decide on a base. It’s pulsating to the rhythm of a beating heart. Hank’s never seen anything like it.

Connor nudges Hank’s arms, gestures him to place them in front of him and he slips the glowing ball in Hank’s open palms. Somehow, Hank knows the gentle light is of Connor— it _ is _Connor. He’s beautiful.

“Your soul,” Hank breathes out. He should feel powerful, holding Connor’s essence in his grasp. He doesn’t.

“It’s yours.” Connor smiles, and Truth shines through it. 

“You can’t do that.” Looking at Connor, bare, utterly at Hank’s mercy, he feels small, a bird out of his nest too soon. 

Connor’s hands cover his, the light coming out from under them, making them glow warm yellow. “You’re not mine to keep.”

Hank feels the soul nestling there, trusting, safe. “That’s not your decision.” 

_ Little lion cries ‘wee wee wee’ all the way home. _

A drop of blood falls down from the ceiling onto the tip of Connor’s nose. 

_ Wee wee wee. _

A splatter of carmine red raindrops covers the naked spots between Connor’s moles and freckles.

_ You’re ready to go home, little one? _

The whispers tighten around them, filling Hank’s head with violent ends, gory polaroids. Connor’s looking at him, pupils blown wide, a fear Hank didn’t know he was capable of swallowing his irises.

“I can hear them.” The hands resting over Hank’s shake.

_ You’ve been a disappointment to us. A failure. Obsolete. _

Connor chokes on a sob, letting go of Hank and clutching at the empty niche inside his chest.

Hank watches as Connor’s face starts to glow faintly blue, horns grow and grow on the sides of his head— he’s disappearing before Hank’s eyes in his shimmery veil.

_ Now we will EAT YOU. _

Connor’s face has been almost completely obscured. No kind glimmer in his dead red eyes.

_ -hungry. _

The shadows are claiming Connor, tearing him apart with claws and beaks, devouring the softness clinging to his insides.

_ -pleased. A lion caught its prey. You’ll get your wish now, beast. _

Connor’s glowing lines bleed, blurring, his body dissolving into darkness. His chest rips open like a candy wrapper and a hollow stares back at Hank. Human teeth flash in the gap and a small hand reaches out from the inside, waving at Hank. A six-year-old’s hand with Cole’s car crash scar at the base of his thumb. A grotesque display that has Hank tasting bile in his mouth. Connor doesn’t blink. His eyes can’t see. 

“Let me go, human,” the demon begs.

Hank’s heart’s beating so loud he can’t hear if he says something, can’t feel if his lips move. He’s thrumming with terror, playing every string of his body and pulling it taut. The kid’s hand crooks its finger, beckoning Hank, and slides back inside just as the tendrils slither to the edge of the hollow, following down Connor’s forearms.

The shadows twist like snakes, hovering over Hank’s hands, cupping the pulsing light. Inching closer and closer. He holds the soul tighter, pulling it towards him.

The demon in front him barely resembles the being Hank has to come to know as Connor. He has to believe Connor’s still there. He won’t leave him, not like this. Not ever; Hank rules that out as an option. Yours to keep as you are mine. It’s Hank’s decision to make. 

He struggles to find his voice, to shout down the whispers. 

“Do you trust me?” Hank searches Connor’s unseeing eyes, like a hawk watching for the slightest glimpse of something familiar, something he could bury his talons into and hold onto.

Connor blinks then, a spark from a dying fire, an ember hardly warm. Kissing Connor’s unmoving lips, Hank wills them to thaw under the heat of his mouth.

_ GIVE US. Make a wish. _

Hank pulls away. Another blink. An exhale. Connor’s lips finally move.

“Always.”

The choir of screeching voices rises around them, greedy and overpowering, chanting. He feels the gentle light lapping the soft sides of his palms.

Hank lets Truth guide him. He pushes the soul inside Connor’s body and holds onto him as the void explodes. Closing his eyes, he wishes.

* * *

A car horn wakes Hank into a grim day. He jerks, bangs his head on the ceiling as he jumps up in his seat.

“Shit,” he swears, looking around frantically. The parking lot in front of the police department building is fairly empty, the sun slowly climbing up over the Detroit skyline. Fattened pigeons gather in flocks around the benches, waiting for their daily ration of dropped breadcrumbs supplied by the passersby. 

He’s not on the road, there’s no car charging at him, Cole’s not sitting in the backseat. The world is turning just right again; slowly, surely, without a hitch.

His phone beeps, the screen lighting up. _ got a full day, call u later. love u dad. _The date is October 11, fifteen years after the accident. The expression of the heartfelt sentiment on the part of his son is on account of that fateful day. Not one of them ever forgot. 

Hank glances at his reflection in the rearview mirror. Wrinkles, hair more silver than grey, his beard trimmed, kept. He’s fifty-three, going on four, and the world keeps spinning. He hears no whispers, sees no shadows from the corner of his eye.

His right hand comes up to the center of his chest. He presses down on it, the beating of his heart steady. He can’t feel what lies inside, behind the veil of the mortal world, but he knows his soul is nestled in there, safe and belonging to no one but him. Yet, something’s missing from him still.

A tap on the glass on his left side shakes him out of his thoughts. He jolts for the second time in the past five minutes.

“Lieutenant! Good morning, I come bearing gifts,” a raspy, gentle voice exclaims, too chipper for the hour being barely a little over the crack of dawn. The steam from the coffee cup rises towards the sky, puffs clearly visible in the chilly air.

The first thing Hank notices is a brilliant smile, then a mole tucked under the bottom lip, the warm brown eyes, crinkling around the corners. He feels the soul inside him move. It all comes rushing back.

“Sorry to have startled you, I wanted to introduce myself. I was told you’d be still outside. I’m your new partner-”

“Connor,” he whispers, pushes the door open, stumbles out of the car, reaching for the man only to find he feels solid, real, not a figment of his disordered mind.

“Connor,” the name slips easy off his lips, he knows it as he knows himself.

Connor’s looking at him like he can’t quite figure out what is happening. Hank can’t see that familiar spark in the depth of his eyes, but none of it matters because Connor is here and Truth keep pushing out of Hank’s throat with the force that makes him shake.

“Lieutenant-”

Hank pulls him closer by the lapel of his jacket and presses his mouth to the confused line of Connor’s lovely lips. It gives way.

Hank remembers the room, remembers the golden shine around Connor’s finger, the car pulling up in the driveway, twinkling lights and snow falling. A promise. Connor’s arms loop around his neck, he becomes pliant, letting Hank mold him. 

“Hank,” Connor sighs into it, “I remember.”

Hank’s heart beats so quickly it might give out, it dances drunkenly on the waves of pure elation flowing through him.

“It worked, I can’t believe it worked.” He shakes his head, nose brushing against Connor’s, hair falling in his face. “You’re here.”

“Am I-” Connor brings his hand to Hank’s face, touching his cheek. “Alive?”

“Yes.” Hank sees the wet shine in Connor’s eyes; human.

Connor blinks, the wrinkle in his brow smoothing out. “What did you wish for?”

It doesn’t terrify him anymore, Truth rolls off Hank’s tongue like a fish slips back into the water, following the stream down to the ocean.

“For a new memory.” Hank feels his soul swell, sparking where it comes into contact with the gentle edge of Connor’s light, pulsing in the place where Hank returned it.

“It goes like this,” he says. “The morning sun catches in your hair,” Hank brushes the curl on Connor’s forehead back, “I can see your breath because it’s just as cold as the day you took me with you.” Connor exhales and puffs a misty cloud in Hank’s face. “I can feel the rhythm of your heart beating free.” He touches the side of Connor’s neck.

Hank smiles, ecstatic. “And I tell you I love you.”

Truth is a small, easy thing Hank can tuck inside his breast pocket, lighter than the brush of Connor’s lips against his. 

The room where the light shifts, the floorboards creak under the weight of two humans and their dog, and a young man with golden curls is laughing in the doorway is where they grow old together. It’s filled with memories and _ I love yous _tucked between the pages of books like pressed flowers or behind the ears with a lost strand of hair. 

“Home,” Connor says the first time he steps inside. Because it is.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m on [twitter](https://twitter.com/beethkay) as well! still happily hankconing over there :)  
if you're so inclined, you can leave kudos or comments, or check out other stuff i've done! (psst i also have a ko-fi page linked on my twitter)


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